2025 Mayo Clinic-ASU seed grant recipients to probe Alzheimer’s, organ transplants and more
A newly funded Mayo Clinic-ASU seed grant project will work on developing an automated tool to improve the success of organ transplants. Photo by Samantha Chow/Arizona State University
Markers of early-stage Alzheimer’s disease can appear in scans of the retina long before clinical symptoms arise — how do we develop a noninvasive, scalable screening tool that supports earlier intervention and diagnosis with this information?
Can using AI help enhance the precision and efficiency of organ transplants?
Can we develop more stable, cost-effective and precise vaccines to help the body fight off cancer?
These are but a fraction of the questions being researched by the 11 grant team recipients of the 2025 Mayo Clinic and Arizona State University Alliance for Health Care Seed Grant Program.
Through the program, ASU researchers and Mayo Clinic experts kick-start joint research projects and build a foundation to attract additional funding.
When awarding grants, the program considers projects that encompass the following factors: transforming the health care workforce, optimizing health and the human body, and establishing connected health care delivery and biomedical innovation. Among these key elements, the project should demonstrate meaningful collaboration between investigators at ASU and Mayo Clinic.
Hear from a few of the grant winners on how they plan to use this funding to transform health care in collaboration with their Mayo Clinic counterparts.
A better endoscope
Sui Yang, assistant professor at ASU's School for Engineering of Matter, Transport and Energy, said: “This seed grant allows us to push the boundaries of medical imaging by transforming a simple endoscope into a powerful, high-resolution tool. By harnessing cutting-edge metalens technology, we aim to make hidden signs of gastrointestinal disease visible earlier than ever before.
"Early detection saves lives, and this support helps us move one step closer to a future where cancer and other pathologies are caught before they become life-threatening.”
More successful organ transplants
Xiao Liu, assistant professor in ASU's Department of Information Systems, said: “Virtual crossmatching (VXM) is a critical piece of organ transplantation as it predicts which donor-recipient pairs have the highest success for compatibility and long-term graft survival. This grant allows us to develop an automated tool to improve the clinical performance of VXM.
"Our project will provide clinical decision support for compatibility assessment and long-term graft survival prediction, which can offload tedious manual record review, stabilize the workload, reduce stress and burnout among consultant staff, and ensure the timely delivery of VXM reports critical to the organ transplant program, while also reducing costs.”
Personalized vaccines
Peter Sulc, associate professor at ASU's School of Molecular Sciences, said: "We will create a universal platform for rapid, personalized dendritic cell vaccines designed to safely activate powerful anti-tumor immunity in cancer patients."
2025 seed grant projects and their lead investigators
- Artificial intelligence-assisted digital, living, interactive clinical practice guidelines for cancer providers and patients: Vivek Gupta, PhD, ASU; Bassam Sonbol, MD, Mayo Clinic.
- Auto-antibodies to neoantigens in pancreatic cancer for early cancer detection: Lusheng Song, ASU; Richard Bold, MD, MBA, Mayo Clinic
- Development of an automated tool to optimize the clinical outcomes in solid organ transplantation: Xiao Liu, PhD, ASU; Katrin Hacke, PhD, Mayo Clinic.
- Engineering nanoparticle systems to modulate leptin synthesis and adipocyte metabolism: Sarah Stabenfeldt, PhD, ASU; Eleanna De Filippis, MD, PhD, Mayo Clinic.
- High-resolution metalens cap for enhanced live endoscopy in detection of gastrointestinal pathologies: Sui Yang, PhD, ASU; Suryakanth Gurudu, MD, Mayo Clinic.
- Magnetic-field assisted liquid embolics: A breakthrough approach to safer aneurysm treatment: Brent Vernon, PhD, ASU; Hakan Ceylan, PhD, Mayo Clinic.
- Novel retinoid development and ex-vivo single cell analysis with response prediction for refractory mycosis fungoides Carl Wagner, PhD, ASU; Aaron Mangold, MD, Mayo Clinic.
- PREDICT-BC: Precision response evaluation using deep imaging and clinical transfer-learning for bladder cancer: Asif Salekin, PhD, ASU; Parminder Singh, MD, Mayo Clinic.
- Retinal imaging-based deep learning model to predict Alzheimer’s disease in presymptomatic stages: Yalin Wang, PhD, ASU; Oana Dumitrascu, MD, Mayo Clinic.
- Self-assembling real-time RNA nanoparticle dendritic cell vaccines (SMART-DC-VAC): Petr Sulc, PhD, Mayo Clinic; Michael Gustafson, PhD, Mayo Clinic.
Targeting the dysregulation of immune-epithelia development in early life to prevent CRC initiation: Miyeko Mana, PhD, ASU; Fotini Gounari, PhD, Mayo Clinic.
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